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While last year’s triangle tree worked out fairly well, it was definitely a last-minute design.  12 feet tall and containing 16 x 42 node strings, it was fun to watch for the last couple weeks in December.

But there’s always room for improvement.

This time, we decided to start earlier in the year, in order to end up with something extra special.

During October’s indoor tree demo, we confirmed that 48 full strings of light added about 100 pounds of weight.  At that trim height, the wiring represents a substantial load & leverage force.  So based on Walter & Jackie Monkhouse’s detailed plans I build a rebar-reinforced concrete base weighing 120 pounds.  This was fitted with sturdy eyebolts as designed, then securely  anchored in the ground with a quartet of 3/4″ concrete stakes 36″ long.

On top of the base I added a two-part pole assembly based on 10′ sections of 2″ and 1.5″ rigid EMT conduit.  From the friendly folks at christmaslightshow.com I procured a 24″ star frame, a megatree hook set and a pully head.  From Lowes I bought, then installed, a geared winch on the pole.  This way the main tree assembly could move up and down for repairs, testing and potential bad weather.

Then, because of the recent 102 mph windstorm not far from our home, I added three external guy wires made of 3/16″ wire rope (rated at 800 pounds minimum breaking strength).  These attached to the top of the 2″ pipe, then anchored in the ground with more 36″ stakes, heavy turnbuckles and a handful of shackles.

The entire post assembly (20′ of pipe, less 2′ of overlap, plus about 2.5′ of star) was assembled on the ground, then tilted into place and anchored securely.

Using a 10′ A-frame ladder, I attached three StellaGreen strings to each of the hook head’s 16 angle brackets.  At this time, the pully head was resting at the top of the 2″ pipe section.  Had I used 1.5″ and 1.0″ pipe for the entire assembly, the hook head would have moved freely to the ground.  However, the sturdiness of the thicker pipe is reassurring.

Once the foundation was set and stable, the hook head was cranked up to full working height.

Finally, I built a base ring from 60′ of 1/2″ PCV pipe, joined together with simple sleeve fittings.  The string spacing at the base of the tree is about 15″ on center, and it’s a nice balance.  Our StellaGreen strings contain 85 RGB nodes on 10 cm (3.93700787 inch) spacing, plus an 2.5 meter pigtail at the beginning for convenient connection to a controller.  Thus, the strings offer more or less 28′ of light to work with.  In this installation, I didn’t want our home or the neighbor’s home to be damaged if the tree somehow tipped over.  So the tree is a bit shorter than it could be, per Mr. Pythagoras and some catenary sagging.  There’s about 3′ of node string at the base of the tree, arranged in a neat inverted sunburst pattern.

The tree is driven by a trio of E16-II Ethernet controllers.  Total power draw is around 800 watts peak.  85 nodes per string x 3 channels per node x 48 strings equals 4,080 nodes and 12,240 total control channels.  With a 44 Hz refresh rate across the entire system, color fades are as smooth as silk.

Neighbors say that at night, when they enter the neighborhood from 1/4 mile away, the top section of the tree peeks through the other houses like an iridescent spaceship.

Hoping to post some video clips in a day or so.  Click any of these photos above to enlarge.

John

The internal power supply (~300 watts) is UL listed, properly vented and power factor corrected.  It autoswitches between 90-265v AC, 50-60 Hz, so worldwide operation is no problem.

The system has no problem at all refreshing all 16 strings at 44 frames per second.

Note the waterproof cable entry glands, durable chassis and shielded power supply breathing holes.

The internal web interface provides easy configuration of each string, plus generates test patterns for system debugging.

We’re proud to call this a ‘plug & play’ system.  It’s proven very stable, durable and trouble-free.  The node pigtails (shown here terminated with waterproof circular connectors) can also be fitted with Neutrik HD-series 4-pin ends.  These are waterproof, very durable, gold plated and designed for installations which frequently change, such as for touring environments.

Click any photo to enlarge.

If you’re interested, contact us for a precisely-tailored complete system quote.

23' RGB Megatree, in blue and white.

Happy Friday!

Fall is finally here.  Love this season.

A lighting designer here in town was considering a giant Christmas tree as part of a December production.  So very late last night, we hauled some gear over to his rehearsal space and set up a demo system.

The twenty three foot tall tree (it could be more, but we ran out of flying space) is based 48 StellaGreen RGB strings and 3 of our new E16-II node controllers.

Complete control over the tree requires 24 universes of DMX data.  That’s more than twelve thousand control channels. However, since we left ‘practical’ behind several years ago, this is not a problem at all. Frame rate is 44 Hz.

More details about the green strings and controller will be posted very shortly.  For now, though, here’s some stills and video from the evening:

Note: I wish I’d remembered to take a photo with a person standing next to tree, just to give some sense of scale.  This tree is enormous.  And beautiful.  For rev2, the base will be bigger and the strings held with more tension.  In theory, the result will look a bit less like the famous Sorting Hat.

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Thanks!

E16 RGB Node Controller

Current Stock (updated as quantities change): More than 30 20

Hi!

We’re cleaning out the factory & need to move a stack of last year’s E16 controllers.

When the E16 was introduced in mid-2010, it was hard to know how popular it would be.  Since then, hundreds of them have been deployed in some very challenging situations, from the hot Australian sun to the bone chilling mountain winter of the USA.

However, it’s now April and there’s a limited number of E16 controllers that need to be cleared from stock.

This is your opportunity to get them at a fraction of what they sold for last year.

The E16 system drives our up to 16 strings of our RGB LED pixels.  Refresh rate is 44 frames per second across the entire system.

All configuration is handled by an internal web server, so you simply need to use a web browser for easy system setup.

There’s no need to install special software.

Light control is via ethernet using industry standard Art-net or E1.31 protocols.

Simply plug in some strings, add power and you’re blinking!

We’ve bundled up a package which includes:

* The Top ‘control’ circuit board, which accepts ethernet data.

* The Bottom ‘drive’ circuit board, which contains high-current connectors for the power supply, 16 fuses for the output strings, and .156″ 4-conductor Molex headers for each output.

* 1 male high-current power connector plus a pair of crimp pins. You provide suitably heavy wire (10 gauge at least) for connecting to your 5V power supply. This matches the female connector on the ‘bottom’ board.

* 16 1′ pigtails which connect to the Molex headers and have 4 pin circular waterproof connectors for direct connection to node strings or node extension cables.

* A wiring guide showing you what needs to be connected to where.

However, this package does not include a waterproof housings or the 5V 50A power supply that are normally supplied.  We can of course design a fully turn key package if that’s what you need.

We thought that some of our more technically inclined customers will appreciate this kit set approach and will be easily able to handle the required wiring and setup.

We’ll confirm proper operation of each individual system in our workshop before it ships. And you’ll get a 30 day, no-questions-asked money back guarantee if you’re not completely delighted.

Price?

Well, last year, depending on the configuration, systems sold for between $895 and $1350.

But since we need the shop space, these boards need to go.

Make a reasonable offer and we’ll see what we can do.  International delivery is no problem.

These won’t last long, so fill out this short form and we’ll get started:

Engineering Solutions was pleased to provide ~8,000 RGB nodes and 12 E16 controllers (plus an appropriate stack of spare parts) to Ricky Martin’s 2011 tour.  We worked closely with Illinois-based Upstaging, who provided the larger lighting rig, and ShowFX in Los Angeles, who fabricated the scenic pieces on which the nodes were installed.

John travelled to LA to assist with patching and configuring the nodes and controllers.  On tour, the nodes would be controlled by a Hippo Critter pixel mapping engine, so a demo Hippo was set up in the shop for testing.  The lighting network was designed so that the Hippo sent data over a dedicated fiberoptic cable to the stage, where it was converted back to copper to feed the 12 E16s.  Somewhere between 36 and 44 universes of DMX are used to drive all the nodes.  The remainder of the lighting rig was controlled with other equipment, and on an isolated network.

The E16′s web-based configuration tool made it very easy to assign each node string to its proper address, based on the paperwork generated by the Bryan, the Hippo programmer.

As an interesting side-note, an Art-Net testing suite called ‘DMX Workshop’ has been published by Artistic License.  Free to use, it contains utilities for sending and receiving Art-Net data on any channel of any universe.  At one point during system testing, the entire pixel map was acting rough and choppy.  The frame rate was slow (way, way less than our regular 44 Hz throughput) and it didn’t look good at all.

So to test whether the problem was related to the Hippo, the E16s, or something in the middle, we disconnected the Hippo, plugged in a Windows laptop, and ran a ‘bandwidth test’ utility against the E16s.

We were able to totally load up the network by enabling universes 1 – 44.  Then we sent an ‘r g b’ walking pattern to the entire system.  That is, each node of each string was in red, then green, then blue.  The test started at a 1 Hz refresh rate.

At this speed, we couldn’t see any delay between nodes or strings.  All of the set pieces were changing color in exact synchrony.  This proved that the issue laid neither with the E16s nor the network switch.

Just for fun, we sped up the chase to 44 Hz and set it to ‘strobe’ (black white black repeating).

The many thousand RGB LEDs chased in unison with our throbbing eyeballs.

This high-speed test was promptly discontinued.

After a quick phone call to Hippo tech support, the jitter problem was traced to an errant setting in the software.

Most of the photos below were taken at the scenery shop.  However, the one of the top left was snapped during production rehearsals in Puerto Rico at the end of March.  Click any photo to enlarge.

Starting at 0:35, this video clip shows the nodes displaying content.  There’s other interesting looks at 5:00 and later.

Stay tuned for an upcoming post describing the ‘Tour Hardened’ E16 Controller and node string system we’ll be offering in a month or so.  We’ve added features specifically designed to make the system strong and road-worthy.  Bless their hearts, roadies can be rough on gear.  You’ll see that we’ve eliminated every potential ‘pinch point’ in the new hardware release.

If you haven’t already done so, enter your name and email address in the top right corner of this page.  You’ll be first on your block to hear about new products, firmware updates and more.

On a happy note, the waterproof E16 chassis withstood a week of nearly continuous rain, snow, warm and freezing weather between Christmas and New Year’s Eve.

Thanks, everyone, for your support and comments throughout the year.  It’s been a wild ride for sure.

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Instinctively, I flinched, expecting a heart-stopping, up-close-and-personal demonstration of how cold her hands actually were.  This has happened before.

“That’s how many of the neighbors complained that you don’t have any lights up this year.”

Through an ironic and frustrating turn of events, I’d been too busy to hang or program anything for Christmas 2010.

Fortunately, today’s schedule was totally open.  I found enough inventory in the workshop (an E16 ethernet bridge + 16 strings) to assemble a nifty little triangle tree.  It measures 12′ tall and 11′ wide at the base.

After letting it run for a few hours, I checked the control statistics (the E16 contains an internal webserver which allows for easy field configuration and feedback) and was pleased to see that one point one million Art-Net packets had been successfully received and processed for each of the E16′s four universes.

Amazing.

Stills (click to enlarge):

Video:

(Note that YouTube was supposed to swap out the regular audio for a bouncing happy Christmas track.  But I don’t think it’s working for all playback locations.  Do you hear music or just road noise?)

Madrix software runs on a quad core 3.4 Ghz Windows 7 beast of a computer.

Video captured with a Canon EOS 7D & 10-22mm zoom lens.

Video clip #2

mrpackethead’s Comet Star is 5 meters (16 feet) tall and 2.5 meters wide.  Each tube uses 48 DMX channels to control 16 nodes inside a translucent waterproof enclosure.

24 strings (folded in half) makes a 48 x 21 grid of light.  Driven by Art-Net and a pair of E16 controllers.

Finally, the guys over at JS_Riddler.com (makers of some cool software which connects to an ENTTEC Pro USB dongle) sent over this demo clip:

If you’ve done something neat with your controllers and nodes, feel free to send over a link to photos, video clips and project information.

An enormous stack of 8-bit RGB LED Nodes

Though we’ve asked the factory to thoroughly test each string of RGB nodes before shipping them to us, I double-check that each color in each node works properly in our shop before sending them out to our end customers.

In this case, 185 strings of 42 nodes were tested today.

For them to be tested simultaneously (they weren’t, but just for fun…) the following calculations are required:

• 185 strings x 42 nodes / string = 7,770 nodes
• 7,770 nodes * 3 channels / node = 23,310 control channels
• 23,310 control channels / 512 channels per universe = 45.5 DMX universes
• 23,310 control channels * 21 mA per channel = 489.51 Amps at 5.0V DC